Faculty Research Accomplishments

Research Descriptions:

Warren Belasco (American Studies) studies the history, culture, politics, environmental implications and future of food. He is the author of Meals To Come: A History Of The Future Of Food (California: 2006) and Appetite For Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry (Cornell: 1993, 2006).

Maurice Berger (Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture) is a cultural historian specializing in 20th-century American visual culture, with an emphasis on the issue of race. His current project for CADVC, For All the World to See, Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights received $440,000 in grant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The nationally touring exhibition, book, and ebsite (www.foralltheworldtosee.org) examine the role played by visual images in shaping, influencing, and transforming the modern struggle for racial equality and justice in the United States.

Jessica Berman (English) focuses on modernism from a trans-national perspective. She has a special interest in questions of politics in relation to twentieth-century narrative and in the connections between canonical modernism and global literatures.

Tamara Bhalla (American Studies) researches South Asian diasporic literary history and South Asian American reading communities. Her general areas of scholarly interest are Asian-American cultural and literary studies, literary reception theory, feminist theory, genre analysis, and multiethnic American literatures.

Beverly Bickel (Language, Literacy and Culture) is a Research Assistant Professor in the Language, Literacy and Culture program and Director of the English Langugage Center. Her work includes globalized communication, new media and transnational public space, and transformational knowledge projects.

Rebecca Boehling (History) has written a book and articles on the U.S. occupation of Germany. She is currently working on a history of a German-Jewish family before, during and after the Holocaust, a book which will be published by Cambridge University Press, as well as a comparative study of denazification in occupied western Germany.

Terry Bouton (History) studies early America and the American Revolution. His book is entitled Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2007). His new research continues to focus on economic opportunity in the new United States.

Stephen Braude (Philosophy) works on the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science, concentrating in philosophical psychopathology (e.g., a book on dissociation and multiple personality) and conceptual issues surrounding parapsychological research.

Kate Brown (History) focuses her research on the Soviet states, ethnicity and nationalism. Her recent book, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland won one of the top prizes of the American Historical Association. She is working on a comparative cultural study of the aftermath of nuclear explosions.

Helen J Burgess (English) specializes in digital media studies, with a particular interest in electronic literature and digital humanities. She also works in science fiction and cyberpunk studies and is currently producing a DVD-ROM about American superhighways.

JoAnn (Jodi) Crandall (Language, Literacy and Culture) works on issues of immigrant and refugee education, especially those of adults in the community college. Recent research has analyzed program design for promoting language acquisition, fostering transitions and developing career ladders.

William Edinger (English – emeritus professor) focuses his research on the history of Western literary theory and criticism from the ancient Greeks and Romans into the Romantic period. His current project is a book on the literary criticism of Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Raphael Falco (English) conducts research on early modern culture and literary theory. He has published books and articles on Renaissance humanism, sixteenth-century courtliness, colonialism, Biblical themes, John Milton and modern poetry.

Robin Farabaugh (English) works on Early Modern Women, wiki technology (wikis) in literature classrooms, wikis in science writing classrooms and creative non-fiction.

Thomas T. Field (Modern Languages and Linguistics) works in the area of Romance linguistics, particularly historical sociolinguistics. For the past few years he has focused on Gascon, an endangered language of southwestern France and Pyrenean Spain. His current project is an XML corpus of the earliest Gascon texts, a tool that will provide a window onto both language change and cultural evolution.

Carol H. Fitzpatrick (English) works on composition and rhetoric, grammar, American literature and Southern literature. Her most recent book, The Complete Sentence Workout Book with Readings, fifth edition, integrates grammar within student composing.

Jay Freyman (Ancient Studies) concentrates on ancient Athenian drama and its connection to liberal education and its debt to antiquity. His work explores aphoristic teaching in fifth century BCE Athenian drama, problems faced by non-Classicists who must consult Classical texts.

Amy M. Froide (History) focuses on the economic and social history of women, especially in 17th and 18th-century Britain. Her first book, Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England, appeared in 2005. She is currently working on a book on female creditors during England’s Financial Revolution and their investment in the Bank of England, joint stock companies such as the South Sea and East India companies, and the British national debt from the 1680s-1750s.

Claudia Galindo (Language, Literacy and Culture) focuses on educational inequality, particularly Latino students’ school experiences, as well as their educational and social emotional outcomes. Her main fields of study include sociology of education, educational policy, and immigration. She was invited to conduct research studies by the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics at Arizona State University and the National Academies/National Research Council’s Panel on Hispanics in the United States.

Marilyn Y. Goldberg (Ancient Studies) studies women in ancient Athens, with an emphasis on the use of archaeological data to correct the biases of the ancient written sources. She also explores research and experimentation in active learning experiences at the college level that can be assessed for learning outcomes.

James S. Grubb (History) focuses on social relations in Renaissance Venice. He is the author of Firstborn of Venice: Vicenza in the Early Renaissance State and Provincial Families in the Renaissance: Private and Public Life in the Veneto, winner of the Marraro prize for the best book in Italian history.

Piotr Gwiazda (English) specializes in modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, with special interests in intertextuality studies, poetic theory, and poetry and pedagogy. He is also interested in creative writing and literary translation.

Linda Harris (English) is currently researching the atomic age with an emphasis on the presence of nuclear weapons in fiction and film.

Sandra Herbert (History) is a historian of science and has edited The Red Notebook of Charles Darwin and Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 1836-1844. Her most recent book is Charles Darwin: Geologist, which has won numerous awards. Professor Herbert is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

John Jeffries (History) focuses on the politics and policy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and on the World War II home front. Most recently (2009), the second edition of his encyclopedia volume on U.S. history from 1929 to 1945 was published. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians.

Omar Ka (Modern Languages and Linguistics) pursues research in two areas of Linguistics: language planning and phonology. He explores language planning and language policy issues facing African countries, and analyzes the Wolof language in its phonology and morphology.

Marjoleine Kars (History)is the author of Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina. Dr. Kars is currently at work on a book about a massive slave rebellion in the 1760s in the Dutch colony of Berbice.

Nicole King (American Studies) researches the social and political aspects of travel and tourism in the twentieth century. She is currently working on a study of tourism and identity in the American South.

Edward Larkey (Modern Languages and Linguistics) explores the interrelationship between popular music, culture and society. He is now using ethnographic and discourse analysis of television shows in Germany and the U.S. to compare and contrast the cultural specificities underlying the adaptation of internationally distributed programs.

Kriste Lindenmeyer (History) focuses on U.S. social history with an emphasis on public policy, the history of childhood, and women and gender during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Professor Lindenmeyer is currently president of H-Net (Humanities and Social Sciences Online).

Jason Loviglio (American Studies) researches in the area of media studies, cultural history and the cultural history of radio in the U.S. in particular. He is currently working on a cultural history of National Public Radio.

Carole McCann (Gender and Women’s Studies) works in the field of contemporary feminist theory and feminist science studies. Her current project is a critical re-reading of gender, race and empire in mid-twentieth century demography.

Christine Mallinson (Language, Literacy and Culture) explores the intersection of regional, ethnic and gender variation in American English, particularly the dialects of Appalachian English and African-American English, with a focus on Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Md.

Richard Mason (Ancient Studies) has research interests that range from ancient Egypt in the third millennium BCE to the rediscovery of Greek and Roman antiquity in the eighteenth century of the present era.

Lucille McCarthy (English) studies writing in academic, professional and medical settings. In particular, she is interested in Writing Across the Curriculum: the teaching and learning of writing in disciplines across the undergraduate spectrum.

Susan McDonough (History) studies medieval history and women’s history. Her research uses witness testimony from civil court records to explore the relationships between Christians and Jews, and nobles and the middling sort in late medieval Marseille.

Denise D. Meringolo (History) is a public historian who engages in collaborative inquiry and interpretation. She works with students, museum professionals, community organizations, and others to identify questions about the past that resonate in everyday life. She is writing a book that explores the origins of this form of historical scholarship, examining the emergence of history as an area of expertise in the federal government.

Gail Orgelfinger (English) studies late medieval English and French literature, with a focus on Joan of Arc and chivalric narrative. She is currently working on a monograph that reexamines the reception of Joan of Arc in English historiography.

Edward Orser (American Studies) centers on community in American culture in historical context, emphasizing the dynamics of urban neighborhoods in Baltimore and other American cities, including issues of race and class. He is also interested in the urban environment, both natural and built, including the design and role of parks in urban life.

Michele Osherow (English) investigates early modern readings and applications of the Bible in drama, poetry, political tracts and life writing. She is the author of Biblical Women’s Voices in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2009) and is currently writing a book on Shakespeare and performance with theatre director Aaron Posner, as well as investigating literary representations of the wives of King David.

Ana Oskoz (Modern Languages and Linguistics) is interested in the use of technology for second language acquisition. She focuses on the use of synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated communication for second language learning and intercultural communication development.

Jessica Pfeifer (Philosophy) focuses on the nature of natural laws and probabilities in science, as well as how these notions apply to specific issues in biology, such as the use of probabilities in evolutionary theory and in the application of information theory to biological systems.

Sara Poggio (Modern Languages and Linguistics) researches factors affecting high school achievement among Latino immigrant children in the State of Maryland. She and Tim Gindling (ECON) are the recipients of a Spencer Foundation grant in order to conduct this research.

Denis Provencher (Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication) is interested in contemporary French civilization and cultural studies with an emphasis on gender and sexuality studies. He is the author of Queer French (Ashgate, 2007) , which examines issues of globalization, language and sexual citizenship in France. He is currently at work on a monograph that will examine issues of Islam, immigration and homosexuality in France.

Daniel Ritschel (History) is a specialist on the economic and political history of modern Britain. He is author of The Politics of Planning: The Debate on Economic Planning in Britain in the 1930s and is at work on a study of business politics in Britain, 1900-1951.

Anne Sarah Rubin (History) studies the Civil War and the American South. Her book, A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868, focuses on Confederate nationalism and identity. She co-authored a CD-ROM, “The Valley of the Shadow: The Eve of War,” which won the eLincoln Prize for the best Civil War digital project. She is currently studying the memory of Sherman’s March.

Elaine Rusinko (Modern Languages and Linguistics) studies the Carpatho-Rusyn people, an eastern European ethnic group that reemerged in 1989 after forced assimilation during the Soviet era. Her focus is Rusyn literature, language, culture and nationality building.

Judith Morganroth Schneider(Modern Languages and Linguistics) research focuses on intercultural writing in France, Latin America and the U.S. She examines such issues as the construction of hybrid cultural identities, rooted cosmopolitanism, diasporic consciousness, transnational narratives and cross-cultural feminisms.

Walter Sherwin (Ancient Studies) focuses his research on Latin plays of the English Renaissance, primarily editing and translating and providing note to the plays.

Sarah J. Shin (Language, Literacy and Culture) specializes in bilingualism, heritage language education and second language writing. She has authored Developing in Two Languages: Korean Children in America and is currently investigating secondary English learners academic language development.

Jody Shipka (English) concentrates her research on composing process studies, histories of rhetoric and composition, multimodal discourse and play theory.

Orianne Smith (English) explores the connections between revolution and prophecy in the work of British Romantic women writers, placing their visionary claims within the context of the rich tradition of female prophecy in England.

John Stolle-McAllister (Modern Languages and Linguistics) focuses his research concerns on popular culture and social movements in Latin America. He spent 2006-2007 in Otavalo, Ecuador, researching the cultural roots and implications of that country’s indigenous rights movement over the past 30 years.

Joseph N. Tatarewicz (History) has worked extensively in public history and the history of science and technology. He is the author of Space Technology and Planetary Astronomy and the forthcoming Exploring the Solar System: The Planetary Sciences Since Galileo.

Christel Temple (Africana Studies) pursues transnational Black studies with specialties in Black cultural mythology, Pan-Africanism, comparative Black literature, Africana womanism and Afrocentricity. She is currently working on a manuscript for The Theory of Black Cultural Mythology.

Constantine N. Vaporis (History) is a specialist in East Asian history. He is the author of Breaking Barriers: Travel and the State in Early Modern Japan and Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo and the Culture of Early Modern Japan (in press).

Ka-che Yip (History), a UMBC Presidential Teaching Professor, is the author of Religion, Nationalism and Chinese Students and Health and National Reconstruction in Nationalist China. His current projects focus on the civilian and military medical systems during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), and public health in Hong Kong.

Steven Young (Modern Languages and Linguistics) is concerned with language change and the reconstruction of earlier stages of languages, with an emphasis on the historical relationship between the Slavic and Baltic language families and their respective developments from Indo-European roots.

Major Fellowships & Grants Recently Awarded to Faculty in the Humanities: